


Steps

by CrimeAlley1048



Category: Batfamily - Fandom, Batgirl (Comics), batfam - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Physical Disability, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-23 19:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19157671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimeAlley1048/pseuds/CrimeAlley1048
Summary: Stephanie and Barbara discuss physical trauma.





	Steps

**Author's Note:**

> I consider this a piece about recovery, but it does touch on some heavy topics. Please consider your own mental health before reading it.

Stephanie sat on the edge of the Batcave’s third hospital bed while Barbara pulled the last stitch though the skin on Stephanie’s thigh. The blood had stopped awhile ago. Stephanie’s flesh, now pulled into a neat seam, looked as good as it was going to get considering she had in fact been stabbed an hour before.

  
Barbara cut away her needle. “This might scar,” she warned.

  
_Perfect_ , Steph thought. It could match the rest of her. She ran a finger down the tear in her costume and the new wound poking out of it. Barbara did a good job. It barely hurt anymore.

  
Stephanie sighed. “That’s fine,” she said. “I’m used to it.”

  
She was. Some days, Stephanie felt like her entire body was made of scars, there were so many of them. They covered all of her, a constant reminder of events she didn’t want to remember.

  
One in particular. Sometimes Stephanie could still hear Black Mask’s voice— his voice alongside her own screams. It wasn’t a pleasant experience to reflect upon, but she always did reflect when she saw the marks on her skin.

  
Barbara nodded like she understood.

  
Stephanie placed a hand over a patch of whitened, puckered flesh on her arm: a burn mark. There were eight others like it on her arms and back. She counted them in the mirror sometimes, on bad days when she wanted to rip them away. She couldn’t, of course. That would only make them bigger.

  
“I’m trying really hard,” Stephanie said, “to love this.” She gestured down her body from the bullet hole in her shoulder to the ribs that never fully healed, and she finished with her palms outstretched in her lap. Her wrists had a dozen layered lines across them. She hid them with bracelets sometimes, but never well enough; the manacle marks always shone through.

  
“It’s my body, you know? The scars are part of me now, and I want… I want to love me, but…” Stephanie trailed away. “It’s hard when I don’t see me anymore. I just see the damage.”

  
She sat still for a moment while it all came rushing back again.

  
“He said he liked the sound of my bones breaking,” she said finally.

  
“Jesus,” Barbara muttered.

  
“He said he’ll never forget it. Never forget that sound.”

  
“Bastard.”

  
“I’ll never forget it either.”

  
Barbara wheeled herself closer and put a hand on top of Stephanie’s. They sat like that for a moment, then Barbara pulled back again. She gathered up the medical supplies and took them to the sink.

  
Stephanie pulled pensively at her hair. “Am I being… I don’t know, am I being ridiculous?”

  
“No,” said Barbara. “I don’t think you are.”

  
“Can I ask a question?”

  
“Yes.”

  
“I know I have to move on, but I don’t know how.”

  
“That’s not a question.”

  
“How did you do it?”

  
Barbara nodded a few times, frowning like she was deep in thought. “We’re talking about my legs now?”

  
“I guess.”

  
“Then maybe ‘moving on’ isn’t the best way of putting it.”

  
“What do you mean?”

  
“There are things that you can… walk away from,” Barbara said, smiling wryly. “Things where the goal is to sit back at the end of the day and say ‘I am still the same as I was.’” She laid a hand on her lap. “This is not one of them.”

  
“So…?”

  
“So I’m not the same. Some days I’m okay with that. Some days I’m not. I’m a different person now, and I won’t pretend that everything is just… okay.”

  
“It isn’t?”

  
“No.” Barbara rubbed her chin reflectively. “No, not always. I get angry. I get bitter. There are things I miss, and things that I would like to do— things that I can’t. I think that’s fairly obvious.”

  
“Yeah.”

  
“When I say ‘different,’ I mean things are different than my life before. I had to teach myself to use this chair, to move around, to do things that I didn’t think would be challenging until I had to do them. That was hard.”

  
Barbara turned on the water briefly to wash her hands. “I had to claw my agency back one shred at a time,” she said. “I had to accept truths about myself that I didn’t want to acknowledge— like the fact that my life will never be the way it was. I had to let people help me, then show them that I don’t always need help.”

  
“I don’t think I understand that.”

  
“You don’t,” said Barbara, smiling. “Can’t, as a matter of fact. But that’s okay.”

  
She left her supplies in the sink and wheeled to face Stephanie fully. “There are ongoing issues. Even the best-intentioned people underestimate me. From friends, that’s a problem. From enemies, well…” The corners of her mouth turned up. “From enemies, that’s an advantage.”

  
Stephanie nodded. Poor saps.

  
“I didn’t wheel myself out of that hospital with my head on forwards and my shit together. It took a long time for me to ever be happy with myself the way I am now. You’re right. It’s hard to look in the mirror and see change.”

  
“So if you didn’t… move on?”

  
“I moved forward, and I took my body with me. I had to. That’s how this works. It doesn’t matter what I was; It matters that I am.”

  
“And I should move forward too?”

  
“I can’t tell you how to process your trauma, but I can say that the changes you see are permanent. Your body is different, and nothing you do will fix that. That’s hard, and there’s no shame in feeling sad or angry. If you need to go scream into the darkness, start screaming. I’ve certainly done my fair share of that.”

  
Barbara continued. “Just… remember that life can be different and good at the same time. What happened to you wasn’t fair or right, but you’re still here, and so am I. That’s not insignificant. We have bodies that survived.”

  
“Yeah.”

  
“There are going to be days,” said Barbara. “Days where you hate your body, days where you love it, days when it doesn’t feel like yours. That moving forward? That’s a process. It doesn’t happen all at once.”

  
“It happens…?”

  
“One step at a time?” Barbara suggested, with the same wry smile. “One step at a time.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to darklingdawns, fernandidilly-yo, and capybarahugs on tumblr for their time and advice in writing this fic. Y'all were so incredibly helpful and kind.
> 
> Much love,  
> Amy


End file.
